Reshared post from +Koushik Dutta
My Response to Dead Trigger's statement on Android Piracy
via DeadTrigger:
"At first we intend to make this game available for as many people as possible — that's why it was for as little as buck," the developer explained on Facebook. "However, even for one buck, the piracy rate is soooo giant, that we finally decided to provide DEAD TRIGGER for free."[How to download pirated apps?] Pretty easy. You search the internet for pirate copies of apps, then copy them onto your (regular, unrooted, non-“jailbroken”) device, and launch them. The system is designed for piracy from the ground up. The existence of piracy isn’t a surprise, but rather an inevitability.
Personally, I think these guys are giant idiots. Piracy is not something that is new or exclusive to Android. PC piracy is just as "rampant".
In the mobile space, piracy is even more seamless on iOS due to a third party app store dedicated to piracy (Installous). No "adb" sideload necessary.
Their crappy game failed to garner interest, so they saved their egos by blaming piracy. Sounds like something the MPAA would say to explain away Gigli: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/gigli/
Here's a tip:
1) Write a decent game
2) Use some server side DRM
3) ProfitEdit:
Furthermore, it seems like they realized that it is a better business model to upsell in app purchases, and have the game be a free loss leader to get downloads. This may just be a deceitful way to minimize the customer backlash by people that initially bought the game for a dollar.
Dead Trigger On Android Faces Rampant Piracy, Now Free – IGN
Many Android users opt to steal the 99-cent game.
Post imported by Google+Blog for WordPress.
I agree that giving the game away is probably their best business model, regardless of how many copies get pirated.
But having a free game doesn't make it a "loss leader", that only applies to things that have a per unit cost (like soda or peanuts). It costs them the same thing whether they sell the game for $10 or $0, and whether they sell 100 install or 1 million.
In fact, the reason they switched to free could very well be that they were making more money off the pirated installs (via in app purchases) then from the paid copies. If there were really that many more pirated copies, the in app purchases from those installs would only have to average 10-20 cents each to make it the more profitable category. Instead of just saying that, they might've spun it to make them look like a victim.
I agree that giving the game away is probably their best business model, regardless of how many copies get pirated.
But having a free game doesn't make it a "loss leader", that only applies to things that have a per unit cost (like soda or peanuts). It costs them the same thing whether they sell the game for $10 or $0, and whether they sell 100 install or 1 million.
In fact, the reason they switched to free could very well be that they were making more money off the pirated installs (via in app purchases) then from the paid copies. If there were really that many more pirated copies, the in app purchases from those installs would only have to average 10-20 cents each to make it the more profitable category. Instead of just saying that, they might've spun it to make them look like a victim.